Mark Ison’s son, Blake, was born without eyes and with a double cleft palate.  Karen, Blake's mother, was exposed to Benlate while working as a parks worker before Blake’s birth in 1993.  Ison said he was relieved the ordeal was over, but is angry that DuPont continued to deny Benlate caused any health problems.  Two other children born to parks staff about the same time as Blake reportedly suffered from birth defects.  Ison said he was unable to discuss details of the lawsuit because of a "media freeze" mandated by the American lawyers, but denied reports that the final payout, made this year, was “lavish,” saying "It will give Blake a buffer, but that's it.  It was to shut us up and they got away with the minimum amount possible."

Ison said he and his wife were naive when they set out to battle a huge multinational corporation.  "We thought once the company could see our children had been damaged they would take it off the market immediately, but it was only when the cost of litigation became bigger than profit margins that they did something."

In 1997, the Isons and Andrea Reilly filed a lawsuit against DuPont along with four British families who also had children born with eye abnormalities.  Ms. Reilly's son, Jesse Hanham, died in 1998 when he was seven years old.  That case went to the US Supreme Court three times before DuPont announced a tentative settlement of $9 million last May for the six original plaintiffs and another 26 families who claimed Benlate caused defects in their children.

Ison said he and the other families who took the case succeeded in their main goal:  To have Benlate pulled off the market.  "We think our action played an important part in that .... We didn't want anyone else to go through what we had."

DuPont began manufacturing Benlate in the 1950s, but stopped its production in 2001 after crop damage claims.  DuPont has paid over NZ$3 billion (approximately $2.3 billion US dollars) in litigation costs so far; cases were filed in the US; however, plaintiffs are from New Zealand and England.

Benlate, was first synthesized in 1959, was introduced in 1970, and was long considered one of DuPont’s most successful fungicides; Benlate’s active ingredient is benomyl.  In 1987 DuPont introduced dry-flowable Benlate 50 DF that was recalled in 1989 and 1991 due to the presence of the herbicide atrazine in some lots.  The recalls generated hundreds of claims and growers began blaming Benlate 50 DF for a wide range of plant problems.  In June 2000, DuPont was ordered to pay over US$100 million to two Texas fruit companies for damage to their orchards due to Benlate dust; in December and February 2000, DuPont lost two separate lawsuits to Ecuadorian shrimp farmers and was ordered to pay US$10.2 million and $12.3 million respectively.  DuPont stopped selling Benlate worldwide in 2001.

Farm workers are at great danger due to exposure to toxic pesticides. Children born to mothers and fathers who work on farms often suffer extreme birth defects. America's Children and the Environment (ACE), a division of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, states: "Studies evaluating the role of pesticides in birth defects have established a connection between maternal and paternal exposure to pesticides and greater dangers of offspring having or dying from birth defects." 

Francisca Herrera, 20, and Abraham Candelario, 21, the parents of Carlos Herrara Candelario,  worked in the Ag-Mart's Florida and North Carolina tomato fields before and after Herrera became pregnant.  In depositions, the boy's parents claimed that Ag-Mart managers did not adhere to seven-day waiting periods after spraying and before sending workers to pick crops. Sometimes, they claimed, workers were sent into the fields the day after spraying. Other times, crops were sprayed with pesticides while workers were in the fields. Carlos, now 3 years old, was born without arms or legs, and with spinal and lung abnormalities.

As part of the settlement, Ag-Mart is not admitting to any wrongdoing.  But following publicity about Carlos and two other severely disfigured babies born to tomato pickers in South Florida, Ag-Mart stopped using pesticides that had been linked to birth defects. According to the "St. Petersburg Times", Florida and North Carolina also hit Ag-Mart with hundreds of citations for pesticide misuse.

Circuit Judge Charlene Honeywell of Hillsborough County, Florida - where Ag-Mart is based - agreed to seal the settlement agreement to protect Carlos and his family.  Attorneys on both sides said Carlos and his parents would be at risk if their neighbors knew the details. "It's not the nicest community where they live," Ag-Mart attorney Keith Wickenden, said after the hearing.

The family's attorney told the "St. Petersburg Times" that the money from the settlement will be placed in trust for Carlos.  His parents will have access to the money to buy a house, buy a car and help him to live a normal life. They cannot touch the money for any purpose that does not immediately benefit Carlos.

The lawyer credited Carlos' family for exposing deplorable conditions in farm work and creating changes that will benefit others for years to come. 

She and the little girls have since recovered without apparent lasting effects. But an Associated Press investigation has found that over the past decade, hundreds, possibly thousands, of schoolchildren in California and other agricultural states have been exposed to farm chemicals linked to sickness, brain damage and birth defects. The family of at least one California teenager suspects pesticides caused her death.

There are no federal laws specifically against spraying near schools, and advocates say California and the seven other states that have laws or policies creating buffer zones around schools to protect them from pesticides don't do enough to enforce them.

"The regulations are inadequate. In the vast majority of cases, people who didn't follow the laws received at best a $400 fine," said Margaret Reeves, a scientist with the Pesticide Action Network, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco.

The pesticide industry says it is committed to safety, and regulators say they are doing their best to enforce the laws.

"Everyone wants to protect children," said California Department of Pesticide Regulation spokesman Glenn Brank. He said his agency is doing what it can to enforce the law with a shortage of agricultural inspectors.

In the Strathmore incident last November, grandparents said the spraying was being done less than 150 feet from the children. Tulare County authorities fined an unlicensed pest removal company $1,100 for spraying a restricted weed killer that morning. But no action was taken over what witnesses said happened to the children.

Because no one reported the incident as a case of pesticide drift, county agricultural inspectors never swabbed the jungle gym or took grass samples, making it impossible to establish whether pesticide had, in fact, drifted onto the playground.

The Environmental Protection Agency does not keep comprehensive national figures on students and teachers sickened by drifting pesticide.

In California, the No. 1 farm state and the one with the best records, there were 590 pesticide-related illnesses at schools from 1996 to 2005, according to figures given to the AP by the state. More than a third of those were due to pesticide drift, the figures show. Activists say that those numbers are low and that many cases are never even reported.

In California's long, flat interior, spraying season lasts seven months, from March through September. When citrus trees blossom and grapevines climb trellises, Lemus prays to the Virgin Mary that her granddaughter won't come home with her eyes watering and head pounding, unable to breathe.

Tulare County, where she lives, is one of the nation's most fertile farm regions, with more than half the schools within a quarter-mile of agricultural fields, according to the nonprofit Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment.

As suburbs push close to farmland, the rate of pesticide poisoning among children nationwide has risen in recent years, according to a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that 40 percent of all children sickened by pesticides at school were victims of drift  pesticide carried on the breeze.

Research on pregnant women exposed to common pesticides has suggested higher rates of premature birth, and poor neurological development and smaller head circumferences among their babies.

The effects on children of small, repeated exposures over a long period of time are unclear, said University of California, Berkeley epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi.

But acute pesticide poisoning can cause nausea, blurred vision, an abnormally fast heart rate, paralysis and death.

Chrissy Garavito, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, died in Fontana in 1997 of a heart rhythm disturbance her mother believes was triggered by exposure to chemicals sprayed at the school. Authorities never confirmed that pesticides contributed to her death.

In 2001, pesticide poisoning nearly killed Elena Dominguez, then a sixth-grader in Wenatchee, Wash.

One day, after playing Frisbee during gym class across the street from an apple orchard, she passed out at her desk.

"She was in a stupor," said her mother, Cindy Dominguez. "She couldn't talk, her eyes were rolling back in her head."

Emergency room doctors dismissed Elena's abnormally fast heart rate as a symptom of dehydration, gave her intravenous fluids and sent her home. Three weeks later, it happened again.

"I was at a track meet and all of a sudden I felt really, really tired," said Elena, now 18. "I made it to the finish line and just fell over."

Investigators found her clothes were soaked in the pesticide Endosulfan I; it had been picked up from residue on the grass and absorbed into her bloodstream through her skin. Officials later found five other pesticides on school grounds and fined the apple grower for forging his applicator's license.

The Dominguez family sued the orchard owner and the Wenatchee school district, which established rules requiring students to stay inside after a spraying, among other things. State officials believe it is the only district in Washington with such limitations.

But keeping students inside may not be enough. Two years ago, 600 students and staff members were evacuated from an Edinburg, Texas, elementary school after pesticides drifted from a cotton field into the school's air conditioning system. Thirty-nine people developed nausea and headaches.

EPA officials say they have no real idea how often pesticides waft onto school grounds. The EPA must register pesticides before they are sold, but federal law does not restrict where they can be sprayed.

"We implement the laws that Congress gives us," said Ruth Allen, an EPA epidemiologist.

Once the EPA approves a product, federal law requires manufacturers to report any "unreasonable adverse effects on the environment of the pesticide" that their products cause. Activists say industry is essentially allowed to police itself.

CropLife America, a national organization representing suppliers of farm pesticides, said their use near schools is well-regulated.

"We're really committed to public safety," said spokeswoman Donna Uchida. "Any kind of use of a pesticide has a labeling requirement that is imposed to protect human health and the environment."

California has some of the strictest pesticide laws in the nation. Under state law, growers and pest control companies can be fined if pesticide drifts from a field and sickens people.

A 2002 state law allows county authorities to establish a no-spray buffer zone of a quarter-mile around schools. But Tulare County has not done so. State officials said they did not know how many counties have set up such buffer zones.

Lemus and environmentalists are pushing for pesticide-free zones throughout California.

"Why don't they tell us they'll spray beforehand so we can bring our children inside?" Lemus said.

• Undeveloped jaws (Pierre Robin Syndrome)
• No visible sex organs
• No nose
• No ears
• Missing limbs